‘A lock-in at Hyde Park Picture House’: Inside LIFF’s all-night Friday the 13th horror marathon

For nearly four decades, Leeds International Film Festival (LIFF) has challenged the city’s bravest cinema-goers to stay awake from dusk until dawn for a marathon of cult carnage, midnight mayhem, and big-screen thrills.

Tomorrow night - fittingly falling on Friday the 13th - the festival’s overnight horror showcase, Night of the Dead, returns to the historic Hyde Park Picture House.

Programmed as part of LIFF’s cult and genre strand, Fanomenon, the event brings together four feature films and a slate of international horror shorts designed to keep audiences hooked through the small hours.

Lee Bentham, who handles communications development at LIFF and co-programmes the marathon, says the secret to the event's enduring appeal is its welcoming, communal atmosphere.

"There's kind of a hardcore, loyal audience that reunite every year," Lee explains to the Yorkshire Evening Post. "We're always loving welcoming people back, and we love that people come back year after year, but we always want to introduce more people to it.

“Every time we talk to people and say we do it, they always say, 'Oh, like an all-night horror marathon!' - or sometimes we describe it as a lock-in at Hyde Park Picture House - and everyone says, 'Oh, that's such a cool idea'."

While the bill is packed with blood-soaked delights, Lee is keen to stress that newcomers do not need an encyclopaedic knowledge of slasher cinema to enjoy the night.

"We just want more people to know that you can come down and it's just a load of fun, even if you're not a horror aficionado," Lee adds. "We programme the night to be fun. We want it to be thrilling, we want it to be fun, we want it to be gory, and we want a few scares in there as well, but we really do programme a mix.

"There's something very different about watching a film like that on your own to watching it in a big audience who are really engaged, and all hunkered down for the night as well. This is a great chance to just kind of let go and just enjoy the ride."

From 1988 'Festival Freaks' to a Leeds cult institution

While tomorrow marks the 25th edition of Night of the Dead, LIFF’s tradition of all-night terror stretches back almost to the festival’s inception in 1987.

"This goes way further back than me - before I was even born, genuinely," Lee laughs.

"In 1988, they did an all-night horror marathon at Cottage Road Cinema called the Festival Freaks All-Night Horror Show, with Dream Demon and Return of the Living Dead Part II."

A Friday the 13th all-nighter at Cannon Cinema followed in 1989 and a John Waters triple bill in 1990, before the modern incarnation began at Hyde Park Picture House in 2000 with Friday 13th: All Night Spanish Mayhem.

It officially returned under the Night of the Dead banner in 2001, screening cult classics including Peter Jackson's Braindead and a personal favourite of mine - Evil Dead II.

Festival director Chris Fell launched the Fanomenon strand, while long-time programmer Martin Grund - who started as a volunteer in 2003 - steered the marathon through to 2021, adapting it into an online Night-In of the Dead during the 2020 lockdown and two late-night double bills at Vue Cinema in 2021 while Hyde Park Picture House closed for renovations.

After a hiatus in 2022 following Martin's departure, Lee joined forces with Queer Fear founder Evangeline Spachis and Reel Gems Film Club host Matthew Chambers to revive the marathon in 2023 alongside Hyde Park Picture House's reopening.

"It would be strange to do it anywhere else now - they are very accommodating to it," Lee says. "There definitely is an audience in Leeds; there is an appetite for it, so it'd be a shame to end it when we feel like we could bring our different audiences together.

“I kind of told the director that it'd be great to bring it back, and if they didn't want to do it, then I wanted to do my own outside of work!

A 40th-anniversary cult treat

Alongside new releases Oddities, Infirmary and No Way Down - plus horror shorts - tomorrow’s marathon closes with a 40th-anniversary 4K screening of the late Stuart Gordon’s From Beyond.

"Horror in general gets snapped up so often by services like Shudder that it can be difficult to programme horror at the festival - which is why we're experimenting with throwing more archive films in there as well," Lee says. "We're big fans of Stuart Gordon. We know that our audiences like his work, but this is one that we think didn't have as much attention compared to some of his other films.

Even if you have seen the film, you won't have seen it like this - in 4K on the big screen - so we can really enjoy all the gore and all the visuals."

Night of the Dead starts at 11pm tomorrow at Hyde Park Picture House with tickets are on the LIFF website.